Steven Tepper writes about this in Fast Company.

Sociologists Richard Pitt and Steven J. Tepper have just released the results of a national study that examines the rise of double majoring on university and college campuses.  With some institutions seeing rates of double majors at or above 50 percent, this timely report explores why students double major, what types of double majors are most prevalent, and how studying two majors impacts students’ academic and extracurricular lives.  The report reveals important insights about the links between double majors and inequality, creativity, and student identity;  it discusses challenges to integrative learning; and it describes how different disciplines — the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and foreign languages – benefit differently from the double major phenomenon.

George Kuh, Chancellor professor emeritus at Indiana University, describes the study as a “thorough an exploration of a phenomenon that for quite some time has been in plain sight but effectively ignored: the nontrivial number of undergraduate students completing requirements for two majors.”

The 5-year study, Double Majors: Influences, Identities, and Impacts, conducted by the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy, was supported by a grant from the Teagle Foundation.

Click here to download the full report:

Double Majors:  Influences, Identities, & Impacts

Click here to read an article on the report in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Click here to read a Vanderbilt News Service article on the research and report.

For more information, visit http://3millionstories.com/.

The Center for Second Language Studies, Center for Teaching, Curb Center for Art, Enterprise & Public Policy, and Warren Center’s Digital Humanities Seminar will co-host THATCamp Vanderbilt University.

THATCamp Vanderbilt University will hold workshop sessions on Friday, November 2, that will feature hands-on instruction on various digital humanities tools and topics. The unconference sessions will be held on Saturday, November 3. Faculty, students, staff, librarians, archivists, journalists, technologists, and other interested parties of all skill levels are encouraged to attend. Participation is free, but registration is required and will be available at vanderbilt2012.thatcamp.org/register/

Read more about other THATCamps at thatcamp.org, and to find out just what THATCamp is, check out this page thatcamp.org/about/.

Read more in the spring 2012 edition of Arts and Science Magazine.

Arts Graduates Find Their Way to Jobs and Satisfying Lives

Findings from a national study released this week show that Americans with arts degrees are generally satisfied with their educational and career experiences. For example, nine of ten (87%) arts graduates responding to the survey who are currently employed are satisfied with the job in which they spend the majority of their work time. Of those employed alumni, 82% were satisfied with their ability to be creative in their current work, whether working in the arts or in other fields.

The report, A Diverse Palette: What Arts Graduates Say About Their Education and Careers, details findings from more than 36,000 arts alumni of 66 institutions in the United States and Canada. Participating schools include research universities, independent colleges of art and design, conservatories, liberal arts colleges, and arts high schools. The results from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) provide insights into the lives and careers of arts graduates of all ages, including their satisfaction with their educational training and experiences, various employment paths, involvement in the arts outside of work, and overall satisfaction with their jobs and income.

“Many think an arts career is an on-off switch, with graduates becoming professional artists or leaving the field to pursue a different path,” remarks Steven Tepper, associate director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. “But there are many variations and hues. Many arts graduates work both in and outside of the arts simultaneously; most continue to make and perform art even when they work as lawyers or lab technicians; and they use their arts training in a variety of settings and careers. In a sense, then, arts graduates never really graduate from the arts….they stay involved.”

Indeed, arts graduates are very involved in the arts and in arts organizations. For example, seven of ten (72%) perform or make art during their non-work time. Almost half (45%) of all respondents donated money to either an arts organization or an artist in the past 12 months, including more than a third (37%) of those with household incomes of under $100,000. Nationally, only 6% of all U.S. households earning under $100,000 contribute to the arts (Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, 2007).

According to Samuel Hoi, president of Otis College of Art and Design, “My college, which has been tracking alumni outcomes for some years, uses SNAAP so that we can better understand our work in the context of nationally comparative data.”

Other noteworthy findings from the 2011 SNAAP survey include:

• Only 4% of SNAAP respondents report being unemployed and looking for work – less than half the national rate of 8.9% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011).

• 84% of employed alumni agree that their current primary job reflects their personalities, interests and values, whether their work is in the arts or other fields.

• Only 3% of all currently-working arts graduates are “very dissatisfied” with their primary job.

• Those with degrees in the performing arts and design are the most likely ever to be employed as professional artists, with 82% of dance, theater and music performance majors, and 81% of design majors working as professional artists at some point.

• Degree level matters in terms of whether an arts graduate works as a professional artist. Eighty-six percent of those with a master’s degree in the arts have worked as professional artists compared 71% whose highest degree is a bachelor’s.

• 57% of all arts alumni have at some point worked as teachers of the arts, and 27% do this currently.

• Aspects of their institution with which alumni are least satisfied include career advising, opportunities for degree-related internships or work, and opportunities to network with alumni and others.

According to Sarah Bainter Cunningham, executive director of research at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, “SNAAP allow us to imagine a future where schooling, public policy, and data merge to form new ideas about igniting the passion and creativity of the next generation of artists.”

SNAAP is a collaboration between the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research and the Vanderbilt University Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy. Participation in the annual survey is open to all degree-granting colleges and universities as well as arts high schools. The registration deadline for this year’s national administration is July 2, 2012.

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SNAAP was launched with generous support from the Surdna Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Houston Endowment, and other funders. The project is based at the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, School of Education, 1900 East Tenth Street, Suite 419, Bloomington IN 47406. More information including a copy of the annual report is available at snaap.indiana.edu as is an interactive SnaapShot based on the findings.

Steven Tepper, assistant professor of sociology and associate director of the Curb Center, speaks at the Osher Lifelong Learning class, about “Protests and Social Change: The Sociology of Protests and the Tea Party”. Watch the talk here, and read more on Vanderbilt News.

Bill Ivey and Elizabeth Long Lingo will present and lead the discussion, with contributions from leaders in the aging and healthcare fields from private and public sectors.

This forum is supported by a generous grant from the NAMM Foundation.

New Policy Concept for Lifelong Learning and Creativity

May 17, 2012

Program

2:00 p.m.

Welcome/Introductions

Robert Blancato

President, Matz, Blancato & Associates, Inc.

NCCA Board of Directors

2:07 p.m.

Remarks

Mary L. Luehrsen

NAMM Director of Public Affairs and Government Relations

Executive Director, NAMM Foundation

2:15 p.m.

Remarks: Expressive Life

Bill Ivey

Director, The Curb Center at Vanderbilt

Discussion

3:15 p.m.

Remarks: Creative Practice

Elizabeth Long Lingo, Ph.D.

Director, Curb Programs in Creative Enterprise and Public Leadership

The Curb Center at Vanderbilt

Discussion

4:15 p.m.

Final Remarks

Bill Ivey

4:30 p.m.

Closing

Sandra Gibson

Principal & Consultant, CultureWorks, Co.

NCCA Board of Directors

The Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt

The National Center for Creative Aging

The NAMM Foundation

a roundtable discussion

The Warren Center will host this roundtable discussion at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, April 13, in Buttrick 123.

Speakers will include Jan Cohen-Cruz (Director, Imagining America, and University Professor of Drama, Syracuse University), Teresa Mangum (Director, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and Associate Professor of English, University of Iowa), and Bill Ivey (Director, Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, Vanderbilt University).

Jan Cohen-Cruz is director of Imagining America and University Professor at Syracuse University. Prior to joining Imagining America in 2006, she taught at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Cohen-Cruz recently published Engaging Performance: Theater as Call and Response (Routledge). She is currently engaged in a project administered by the Bronx Museum and funded by the State Department involving community-based visual arts cultural diplomacy projects taking place in 15 countries around the world.

Teresa Mangum is a professor of English and director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Iowa. She is a member of the National Advisory Board of Imagining America. Mangum and Anne Valk of Brown University have just launched a book series, Humanities and Public Life, with the University of Iowa Press. She wrote Married, Middle-brow, and Militant: Sarah Grand and the New Woman Novel (University of Michigan Press). Mangum founded and co-directed the Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy.

Bill Ivey is director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. He serves as Senior Consultant to Leadership Music, a music industry professional development program, and is immediate Past-President of the American Folklore Society. Ivey recently published Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights (University of California Press). From May, 1998 through September, 2001, he served as the seventh Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal cultural agency.

Vanderbilt University is a member of Imagining America, which is a consortium of 90 colleges and universities, and their partners, that emphasizes the possibilities of humanities, arts, and design in public scholarship. Public scholarship refers to diverse modes of creating and circulating knowledge for and with publics and communities. It often involves mutually-beneficial partnerships between higher education and organizations in the public and private sectors. Its goals include enriching research, creative activity, and public knowledge; enhancing curriculum, teaching and learning; preparing educated and engaged citizens; strengthening democratic values and civic responsibility; addressing and helping to solve critical social problems; and contributing to the public good.